Workshop > Blogging with WordPress to Win Friends, Find Fans and Persuade People to Support Your Nonprofit Organization
Learn to successfully plan, design, launch, maintain and promote a blog for your nonprofit organization on WordPress.com. Attendees will learn how to use Themes, Plugins, Widgets, and basic HTML to design a blog that matches your website and helps recruit new e-newsletter subscribers, online donors, and supporters on Facebook, Twitter and social media networks. From basic to advanced, this workshop explores the WordPress interface and toolset. Attendees learn how to insert select and insert images and videos into blog posts, monitor statistics on visitors and comments, and create an editorial content system that enables you to assign, track and monitor upcoming blog posts from multiple authors. Blogging best practices in terms of post frequency, length, tone, and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are also covered in detail. Read more 
Alberta Animators Wendy Tilby and Amanda Fortis Nominated for 2012 Genie Awards
Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis are an Alberta born animation duo. On January 24, 2012, they received their second Academy Award nomination, for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) animated short film, Wild Life. In addition to writing and directing the film, Forbis and Tilby drew and painted every animation frame in guache, and wrote the lyrics for the film’s final song. They were only able to work on Wild Life part-time, due to commercial obligations, and the film is reported to have taken them from six to over seven years, from concept to completion. On March 8, 2012 they will find out if their herculean efforts on Wild Fire results in a 2012 Genie Award, Canada’s version of the Academy Awards. Read more
MediaCamp Edmonton at the World Trade Centre on February 4, 2012
MediaCamp Edmonton is a one-day conference aimed at getting journalists and other storytellers together with technology developers to learn new skills, understand more about each other’s worlds, and find ways to work together. Brought to you by Edmonton Economic Development Corporation, Edmonton Journal, Yelp Edmonton, Global Edmonton, MacEwan University and Calder Bateman. Read more
The 2012 Corus Entertainment Distinguished Lecture “Stories about Storytellers” Edmonton, March 2, 2012
Prepare to meet Alice Munro, Pierre Trudeau, Robertson Davies, Alistair MacLeod, Mavis Gallant, Hugh MacLennan, Peter C. Newman, Brian Mulroney, Morley Callaghan, John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul Martin, James Houston, Peter Gzowski, W.O. Mitchell, and many more. MacEwan’s School of Communications invites you to hear Douglas Gibson, the 2012 Corus Entertainment Lecturer. This free public event is scheduled for March 2, 2012 in the Haar Theatre at the Centre for Arts and Communications at MacEwan University. The address is 10045 156 Street. There will be a reception at 5:00 p.m. with the lecture at 6:00 p.m. and dessert and networking to follow. Admission is free. There is no need to RSVP. Read more
New Romantic Comedy Now Shooting in Edmonton January 5 to 25, 2012
I Think I Do from Rocky Mountain Picture Company and Panacea Entertainment starring Mia Kirshner is now being shot and produced in Edmonton. I Think I Do is a romantic-relationship comedy about commitment, cold feet, the endurance of true love, the importance of family ties and the hard lesson learned that, try as we may, life simply does not go as planned. I Think I Do will be screened on W Network in Canada and Lifetime in the United States. Starring Canada’s Mia Kirshner along with Jenny Cooper, Sara Canning, James Thomas, the film is being made in Edmonton with a local crew and production team featuring locations and services from local vendors. Read more
Startup Hackathon + Global Game Jam Edmonton January 27 – 29, 2012
Startup Edmonton and GameCamp Edmonton join forces to bring you Startup Hackathon + Global Game Jam – the city’s biggest-ever 54 hour marathon of coding, design, and lots of energy drinks. Make an app, make a game – just make something people want. Like previous Startup Weekends, developers, designers, marketers, players, and startup enthusiasts come together to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch startups. Beginning with open mic pitches on Friday, attendees bring their best ideas and inspire others to join their team. Over the weekend, teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas, and culminating in a final demo night where teams show off their prototypes and receive valuable feedback. Read more
CKUA Awarded $5 Million for their Capital Campaign by the City of Edmonton
In a recent capital budget meeting this December, the City of Edmonton granted the request by CKUA of $5 million. The funds were requested to offset the difference in the purchase price of their new location in the former Alberta Hotel building and the sale price of their current location at the Alberta Block on 105 Street and Jasper Avenue in Edmonton. “The City’s funding is key to the whole process. We’ll now be able to leverage their support fto secure private and publich sector funding,” reports Ken Regan, the station manager. Now in the “quiet period” of a larger campaign to redevelop the Alberta Hotel location to suit their needs. The current location in the Alberta Block decidedly does not suit their needs as Todd Babiuk makes clear in an April 7, 2011 column in the Edmonton Journal: Read more
Jerry Forbes Centre for Community Spirit to Hold Fundraising Gala in Edmonton on October 1, 2011
The Jerry Forbes Centre for Community Spirit (named after Jerry Forbes Sr, the GM of CHED for 28 years) is holding a 2011 Mardi Gras Dinner and Auction on Saturday October 1, 2011 at the Crowne Plaza Chateau Lacombe. Tickets: $125 per person. Dress: Formal. 5:30 Cocktails & Silent Auction, 6:45 Dinner, 7:00 Live Auction, 9:00 Dance. All proceeds to support Jerry Forbes Centre for Community Spirit and the Rotary Club of Edmonton South. The Jerry Forbes Centre for Community Spirit is named in honour of broadcaster Jerry Forbes who got his start at CFRN in 1947. He moved to CHED in 1954 where he was their first production manager and eventually became the station’s general manager and founded CHED’s Santa’s Anonymous Program. He spent 28 years at the station and retired and passed away in 1981. His commitment to community spirit is now being taken over by his son, Marty Forbes. Like his father before him, Marty recently retired as the GM at Edmonton’s Astral Media stations after spending his professional career in broadcasting. Read more
Global TV Edmonton Shoots the Opening of the Capital Theatre at Fort Edmonton Park
Global Edmonton shoots the opening of the 1929 reproduction of Capital Theatre at Fort Edmonton Park on August 26, 2011. The Capital Theatre is the first of many projects for Fort Edmonton Park. The Capitol Theatre is a re-creation of the 1920′s theatre located on Jasper Avenue and 100 Street. The re-creation will be a 250 seat theatre. The intent is to re-create the former Jasper Avenue façade following the restoration in 1929. Internally, the building will incorporate modern construction methods, but balance issues such as building code and the necessary technical infrastructure with historical authenticity. Construction on the Capitol Theatre began in the summer of 2010 and was completed in August, 2011. Read more
MacEwan University Rebrands their Student Newspaper to The Griff in September
Come September MacEwan will rebrand their student newspaper from Intercamp to The Griff with a nod to their athletic teams, The Griffins. The student newspaper began as a newsletter in the early 1990s when MacEwan was still a community college. This name Intercamp reflected and united the four individual campuses that make up MacEwan. When MacEwan dropped community from its name in 1999, Intercamp was being published as a full-fledged newspaper. MacEwan has come a long way since then, and to celebrate this evolution, they decided it was time the student newspaper followed suit. See the rest of the posting by Jenny Feniak, former events reporter for the Edmonton Sun.
Edmonton’s Quon Dynasty to Air on Citytv Edmonton and Calgary This Fall
The Quon Dynasty, a tv series produced by of Anaid Productions with offices in Edmonton and Vancouver, follows Canada’s favourite family of Chinese restaurateurs as they seek to solidify—and expand—their decades-old prominence on Edmonton’s chow mein scene at the Lingnan Restaurant. Inter-generational friction and deep-rooted sibling rivalry cause plenty of sparks (most of them hilarious), but abiding love and loyalty keep the family business moving (or occasionally lurching) forward. Canada first fell in love with the Quons on Anaïd Production’s award-winning series The Family Restaurant. Now, with a new title and a new broadcaster, excitement is building to see where their story takes us this year. No longer tied to food as an ever-present theme, this new series will expand our view of this amazing family. Read more
Edmonton’s Social Networking Site Nexopia an Internet Success Story
A true internet success story, Nexopia was born in the dark of a cold Edmonton winter only to rise to become Canada’s largest social networking site for youth. With over 1.5 million members, and hundreds of new accounts created every day, Nexopia is quickly solidifying its reputation as the online place for teens to connect and express themselves. Today the site is registering 35,265,275,383 hits by 1,515,433 users and there were 7, 497 users online at the time I was researching this article. Read more
Marilyn
Jones is a corporate and social media advocate for individuals, small businesses
and nonprofit organizations in Alberta. She lives in Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada and is the proprietor of RiverCity Productions. You can contact her
by phone at 780-695-5675 or by email at marilyn@mediamag.ca.